Crossing the Cliffs of Dover. The actual weather was reported to be 'turbulent'.

﻿﻿Postcards of the first crossing of the English Channel/La Manche by aeroplane (a trip which took 37 minutes), piloted by French aviator Louis Charles Joseph Blériot (1 July 1872 – 2 August 1936) on 25 July 1909 for which he won a prize of £1,000 offered by the Daily Mail newspaper. As well as an aviator, he was an inventor and engineer, and he developed the first practical headlamp for cars and established a profitable business manufacturing and making them, using much of the money he made to finance his attempts to build successful aircraft.

This cog wheel railway, part of the Jungfrau region railways, is 19.1 km long and in 800 mm gauge. It leaves Lauterbrunnen and connects Wengen, Kleine Scheidegg and Grindelwald. Opened in 1893 as the longest cog-wheel railway in Europe, it was steam powered to 1902, mixed steam and electric to 1912 and electric since then.

Or in English, Lake Bigge, in Westfalen, an artifical lake created for a hydroelectric power station in the 1950s and it provides resevoir water for the Ruhr district. The Salonschiff or saloon ship Bigge in the pic was built in 1982 and substantially added to in 1993. Pics and plans of its present appearance here.

Just hooks on the back, or an alcove, in both cases with a bar on the base. The NZR Road Services bus on the left seems to have a sign saying "school bus" so you wonder why there is a pram on it too. Is the bus in the distant right an AEC?

WCC buses mostly had alcoves in the left side with a base bar, while DCC buses had hooks on the front (see earlier posts).

The late 1960s: 4-wheel goods wagons and cranes for lifting their contents into the hold of the Norddeutscher Lloyd ship Bremen

Before people took to flying en masse, leaving shipping companies bereft of passengers, Bremerhaven on Germany's North Sea coast was an important embarkation point for trans-Atlantic passengers to America. A quay-side railway station was built and used, with rebuilds, into the 1970s.

Designed in a "Raj" style, this station was opened in 1910. It has three platforms (2 side and 1 island) with 4 tracks. Its long distance train function was replaced in April 2001 by Kuala Lumpur Sentral (KL Sentral) or Sentral Kuala Lumpur and the 1910 station now serves local commuter traffic only.

Monday, January 30, 2012

In 2008 the Port of Wellington celebrated the arrival of its new tugboat, the Taiki, built in Vietnam. She replaced the aging Kupe, which was reassigned to the port of New Plymouth. Here the Taiki is shown in a Wallace Trickett oil painting with workmates the Ngahue and Toia alongside.

You may think that Holland doesn't need bridges except over rivers and canals, however, this former Bergspoor ("hill track") tram line from Beek to Berg en Dal (literally "hill and dale") ran in the area close to Germany. In the second pic there is another track alongside the road in the foreground: this was part of the loop to overcome the height difference in this area. Thisviaductwas built in 1912was oneof thefirstreinforcedconcrete structuresin Holland. The tram closed in 1955. Here is a video on the line (Dutch commentary):

It's not just coal which goes over the Midland Line, the dairy factory in Hokitika is another source of traffic. Here is a recent pic of such a train running through the Greymouth station with natural evening light bathing the area.

The Somes Island (a.k.a. Matiu) lighthouse is at the south end of the island. This photo on display in the visitor centre shows the little railway worked by cable (thus a funicular) once used to bring supplies up from the beach. It has long been removed.

A 10-minute compilation of two films shot during the September 1945 airshow at Freeman Field Base in Indiana with aircraft (mostly American but also some captured enemy aircraft) seen both in the air and on the ground. The Freeman Army Airfield Museum provided the video, here

Built in 1902 by the Norfolk & Western, the Bristol Train Station was unused in the latter part of the 20th century after the cessation of passenger services (although the railway line is still in use, part of today's Norfolk Southern), so a non-profit foundation and the two local governments bought it in 1999 and after a 9 year, $5 million restoration, it was reopened as a local shopping mall and convention venue in 2008. Website

So here is an appropriate recent book: Historic Auckland and Northland is the third in a series of regional pictorial histories commissioned by David Bateman publishers and like the first two, on Gisborne/Hawkes Bay and Otago, consists of a selection of interesting b/w photos which fill most of the page with captions, plus chapter introductions. These ones are mostly from the Auckland Museum, the large building that dominates the Auckland domain, where the compiler is a curator.

Aimed at a general history audience, the compiler has regarded transport as incidental rather than the main focus, but given its importance it is inevitable that it features in quite a few of the approximately 150 pictures, particularly ships and early road vehicles; and even a train: the second photo above shows the narrow gauge industrial line of the Drury Pottery and Fireclay Works with one of the 400+ private industry steam locomotives that were brought to NZ, about which little has been researched and published.

This isn't in-depth history, rather "flick lit" but the printer in China has done a superb reproduction job (which is usually the case, despite what a few people think) and it has been attractively designed. 160 pages in 260 mm square format, hard cover with jacket, $49 from the transpress nz shop.

Now preserved by the Mainline Steam Trust, "Pacific" type steam locomotive AB 663 is seen at Cromwell station yard in Central Otago in 1958. This area is now under the artificial Lake Dunstan. For hundreds of photos similar to this one, see the book New Zealand 1950s Steam in Colour. (Stephen Buck).

Built by J.G. Brill in 1904 for the Portland Railway Company with motors and brakes especially designed for the steep Portland Heights Line, converted to buses in 1950. It is now at the Oregon Electric Railway Museum in Brooks, Oregon.

A heritage operation using replicas of these cars was begun in 1991 in Portland and currently operates along a 1.5-mile (2.4 km) section of Portland's MAX Light Rail system, on the transit mall in downtown Portland, from Union Station to Portland State University.

Viewed from the north side of the Grey River. Both these bridges have since been demolished and replaced - the S shaped railway trestle bridge (to the left) only in 2006. For more, see the book On the TransAlpine Trail.

One of the best known train songs, "Chattanooga Choo Choo" was written by Harry Warren (music) and Mack Gordon (words). It was recorded in a big-band/swing style by Glenn Miller and his orchestra and featured in the 1941 movie Sun Valley Serenade.

The song was recorded on 7 May 1941 for a 78-rpm single on RCA Victor's Bluebird label and became the first to be certified a gold disc on 10 February 1942 for sales of 1,200,000. In 1996 it was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.

This former impressive looking station was located at the intersection of Washington and Norman Streets in Salem, Massachusetts, a town most associated with the witch trials of 1692, despite the town's name which means "peace" in both Hebrew (shalom) and Arabic (salaam).

Understandably, with the growth of road traffic, this street railway was later sunk underneath the streets in tunnel and the present day station is found at the north end of Washington Street beyond the tunnel.

In the recent snail-mail was a brochure for the Rocky Mountaineer trains operating out of Vancouver (including services to/from Seattle, Washington) designed to treat tourists to "rail cruises" on different routes through western Canada's sumptuous mountain scenery, as shown on the route map. Very tempting... Rocky Mountaineer website

A TGV-POS set from the time of their deployment on French-Swiss services in February 2011. (CFF pic)

Since 4 March 2002, the name Lyria has been applied to TGV high speed rail services between France and Switzerland and was applied to Paris–Geneva trains around January 2005. Service to Geneva had existed as part of the Ligne à Grande Vitesse or LGV Sud-Est since 1981.

After the opening of the TGV Est in June 2007, Lyria service between Paris and Zurich began using the newly-constructed line instead of the previous route, passing through Strasbourg, Colmar, Mulhouse, and Basel. Consequently, service from Paris has run from the Gare de l'Est instead of Gare de Lyon.

In February 2011, service improvements were announced, with a fleet of 19 latest generation TGV POS (the POS standing for Paris-Ostfrankreich-Suddeutschland) trains giving increased frequencies.

Since 12 December 2010, travel time on the Paris–Geneva line has improved with the reconstruction of the Haut-Bugey line, which connects Bourg-en-Bresse and Bellegarde-sur-Valserine. Until then, only the western part of the line was open (up to Oyonnax), and the project has restored the entire length of the line. Travel time between Paris and Geneva reduced by 30 minutes, to 3 hours and 5 minutes, and track capacity was also increased, allowing nine trains each way per day instead of the usual seven.

With the completion of the LGV Rhin-Rhône this year, travel time between Paris and Basel/Zurich will be reduced by 30 minutes. The departure station in Paris will be changed back to the Gare de Lyon instead of the Gare de l'Est.

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All at Sea: stories of New Zealand seafarers

Narratives from interviews conducted over several years with 16 merchant navy sailors - 14 men and 2 women - who recounted their stories from the last full fledged sailing ship, the Pamir being returned to her home country of Finland after WWII to recent stories on today's inter-island ferries and coastal vessels, as well as international cargo and passenger ships which sailed to various parts of the globe. A full range of occupations are covered from Deck Boy, Engineer, Steward to Master as well as harbour pilots, union leaders and shipping company executives.

NZR Memorabilia

A fabulous new book containing many colourful illustrations of old postcards, pamphlets, posters, and a wide range of objects that have been used by the NZR and its personnel from the 1860s to the present time. Together they tell in visual form the importance of NZR to NZ and its people over the past 150 years and provides a useful reference for collectors.

Voyage to Gallipoli

Details of the troopships to the Gallipoli campaign of WW1 and more WW1 naval history.